The Nuremberg Files is at the center of a federal lawsuit working its way through the courts that will determine the vexing legal question of whether the site is protected by free speech or whether it perpetrates illegal threats or intimidation. The addition of video — which enables Web users to attach names to faces of people associated with abortion clinics — is likely to lead to further legal tussles.

Though the clips are grainy and short, they represent a giant escalation of the nascent international effort by militant antiabortion groups to integrate the Web into their efforts. In recent months, Horsley has posted more than 1,000 still photographs of clinic workers and volunteers taken by antiabortion activists in 22 states on his site.

One recent video clip depicted the white-haired owner of the Ladies Choice Women’s Medical Group in Palm Desert, Calif. As Dr. Joseph Durante arrives at the clinic, “Earnie,” a local protestor with a video camera, dogs him with confrontational remarks and loud prayers. Another clip showed the arrival of a medical waste disposal truck, which Earnie calls the “dead baby truck.” In a third one, “Earnie Tells It Like It Is,” the protester gets vulgar, shouting profanities at women entering the clinic: “Your baby is not a bowel movement. Don’t let him stick his filthy fingers up your crotch.”

“We intend to stream a steady collection of pictures showing the people who go out to where they slaughter babies for a living,” Horsley announced in a letter to supporters in the spring.

Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers, believes the photos and videos represent a new form of “harassment and intimidation.” But while she’s concerned about the implicit breach of “women’s privacy and confidentiality,” Saporta doesn’t believe the effect will be chilling enough to keep women from seeking abortions or stop doctors from providing them.

Priscilla Smith, deputy director of the Domestic Program at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, agrees, but worries that “some women may be scared away from the reputable clinics where [Horsley] has his cameras.” She also notes that some states have strong privacy and tort laws on the books that might be applicable to individuals whose privacy has been invaded by the Nuremberg Files postings. The center plans to lobby for the passage of such laws in states where they don’t exist. “We’ll fight this battle like we fought the other ones,” Smith says.

Horsley recently drew criticism abroad when he posted the name of a Scottish clinic administrator on his site after a British court ruled that a similar U.K. site had to remove the woman’s name. And the murder of a security guard at an abortion clinic in Melbourne, Australia, earlier this week has given his extremist activism a new and disturbing resonance. The BBC reported that “doctors in Australia have said they fear the murder … is the start of U.S.-style antiabortion violence.”

Smith says the debate over the legality of Horsley’s new tactics raises one of the fundamental questions of the Digital Age. “What is our expectation of privacy now that the Internet can broadcast all over the world?” she asks. The answers lie in a largely uncharted area of law that Horsley and his friends in the antiabortion Army of God and the broader militant wing of the pro-life movement are prepared to test.

Meanwhile, Horsley and other antiabortion activists are seeking to recast themselves as enterprise journalists in the public eye, now identifying themselves as “reporters” for Christian Gallery News. But Christian Gallery appears to be the first and only news agency organized for the sole purpose of intimidating women from exercising their constitutional right to have an abortion.

“We think it is a good idea for people to identify themselves as Christian Gallery news reporters,” writes Horsley’s teenage daughter, Kathy, in an article offering advice to protesters who want to submit their own photographs and videos to the Nuremberg Files Web site.

“Dad and I” are “truly legitimate reporters of newsworthy events,” she writes. “We made up nametags and business cards as well as had magnetic signs saying ‘Christian Gallery News Service’ put on our vehicle. We made extras and would be more than happy to send them to anyone who requests them.” In the article, she reports that they made a dry run a few weeks ago, driving a truck so labeled to abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala.

But characterizations of Christian Gallery’s work as legitimate journalism draw scorn from skeptics. “These are anti-choice extremists; they have no credentials,” says the National Abortion Federation’s Saporta, whose name is listed on the Nuremberg site. “They are not legitimate journalists.”

An essay on the site by 19-year-old Horsley protégé Jonathan O’Toole isn’t likely to assuage the skeptics. In “Tips on Being an Abortion War Correspondent,” O’Toole writes: “With your entry into the war as a correspondent, you will become a force for life like few among us … So identify yourself as a freelance photojournalist, and above all, draw the First Amendment like a gun and shoot!”

O’Toole was a central character in “Soldiers in the Army of God,” a documentary that aired last spring on HBO. His philosophy that killing abortion providers might be a good career choice was a main theme of the film. The “next step” for antiabortion activists, O’Toole asserted in the documentary, is “to arm ourselves in a militia — a real militia that has the power to resist the federal government.”

O’Toole also maintains that Christian Gallery is a “responsible news service” and that its reporters are “lawful agents of the press.”

Whether the ambitious Horsley and his cam-toting cohorts are truly journalists is a question for the courts to decide. But they are still required to obey the law, says the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy’s Smith. “While there are certain things in a free society that we can’t do anything about,” she says, “there is no journalistic exception to the law. They still can’t trespass, block clinic entrances or invade people’s privacy.”

“Pray,” he asks his supporters, “that every one I kill causes a hundred to quit.”

Waagner’s threat has galvanized abortion providers, clinic defenders and law enforcement officials into a state of high alert, while Army of God leaders are cheering Waagner on and calling on pro-lifers to give him shelter.

“Go Waagner, go!” cheered Army of God “chaplain” Rev. Michael Bray on the message board (which has now been shut down without explanation). Bray hails the fugitive as a “fellow who goes for the gusto,” and urges antiabortion activists to help Waagner continue “giving the slip to federal agents” by hiding him in their homes.

“If someone doesn’t catch him soon, he’s going to kill someone,” says an alarmed Ann Glazier, director of clinic security for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “He meets all the criteria,” she continued. “He has weapons; he has money; he is clear about what he wants to do; and he has a means of getting from one location to another.”

“It’s a tough case,” says senior inspector Geoff Shank of the U.S. Marshals Service, the division of the Justice Department responsible for, among other things, keeping track of federal prisoners. “We arrest people all over the world,” Shank observed, “so there is nowhere he can hide. Waagner is a convicted felon who has escaped from prison. And we will pursue him till we get him, no matter how long it takes. Pro-life or pro-choice has nothing to do with it.”

Waagner is currently on the U.S. Marshals’ Most Wanted List.

At the time of his escape, Waagner, of Kennerdell, Pa., was awaiting sentencing — 15 years to life — after his conviction on federal weapons and stolen vehicle charges. Since then, the crafty criminal has repeatedly slipped though the police dragnet, leading cops on a chase while stealing cars and robbing at least one bank. He has apparently recruited accomplices, including an unidentified man who drove the getaway car for the bank stickup last week outside Harrisburg, Pa.

“Thanks to some very generous bank financing” — an apparent reference to the Harrisburg heist (and, the FBI believes, possibly others), Waagner says he is ensconced in a “very secure safe house” and has assembled “the tools I would need to wage war.”

Waagner is far from a populist antihero, merrily thumbing his nose at the cops. His beliefs and plans are more comparable to those of the grimly methodical Timothy McVeigh, the Aryan Republican Army and other violent far-right revolutionaries of the past decade, including, of course, the Army of God, a shadowy, loosely affiliated band of antiabortion terrorists who’ve taken responsibility for assorted clinic violence. Waagner envisions himself pitted against “the most powerful country in the world” — a country that views him as a terrorist.

“They’re right,” he declares. “I am a terrorist. And that’s the reason I’m posting this letter.”

Waagner likes to taunt the feds. In his message, he describes how he fled unseen across open fields in the winter, “dressed as a pumpkin” — an apparent reference to his prison-issue orange jumpsuit. He also ridicules the marshals’ national manhunt. “Where is all this manpower going? he wonders. “Sure they’re watching my house. I’ve driven by there.” But Waagner claims “they haven’t been watching the clinics very close. I know this because [I've] been watching them close and I saw no U.S. marshals, nor did any see me.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” senior inspector Shank says of the taunts. “You get this stuff all the time.”

The only confirmed Waagner sighting since his escape was at a Tennessee truck stop. But staffers at several abortion clinics, including one in Harrisburg, believe they have seen him. Shank, while not out ruling out the possibility, says that there are no confirmed sightings of Waagner at clinics. But at his trial last year, Waagner testified that he had stalked over 100 clinics in 19 states.

Waagner and the Army of God know that to create terror you don’t have to be everywhere; people just need to feel that you might be anywhere. So without firing a shot, Waagner has met at least part of his goal, frightening clinic staff nationwide, and contributing to their feeling of being under constant siege.

And it’s the possibility that Waagner will act on his stated threat that drives broad interest in the case, even as Shank and the marshals try to stay focused on capturing the fugitive. Unlike James Kopp, who was captured in France and awaits extradition to the U.S. to face charges in the assassination of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian, Waagner boasts that he will stay in the U.S. to “envoke [sic] terror,” and perhaps find martyrdom.

God rescued him from jail, he says, so that “I might lay down my life for His will. He freed me to make war on His enemy … And a war it shall be.” “I do not believe I will live long enough to see this war end,” he declares, “but I do believe I will see it become changed.”

“Time will tell if Clayton will obey the voice of God in this matter,” writes the Army of God webmaster, Rev. Don Spitz, in an introduction to Waagner’s message. “Many anti-abortionists believe God opened the door of escape for Clayton to give Clayton a second chance to do God’s will.”

The arrest that set in motion Waagner’s imprisonment, escape and “crime spree with a mission” occurred on Sept. 12, 1999, when a state trooper stopped to assist a broken-down Winnebago. It turned out that the Winnebago was stolen and that stolen handguns were stashed under the seat. Waagner told everyone who would listen that he wanted to kill abortion doctors, but that he hadn’t been able to do it yet. He also told a federal agent that if his wife and eight children hadn’t been with him, he would have killed the arresting officer. During his trial, he said his only regret was that he hadn’t shot an abortion provider.

Since then, Waagner has concluded that doctors are too well protected to be targets of violence, and says he will be “going after everyone else. Anyone who works at an abortion location or Planned Parenthood (I don’t care if their location actually performs abortions or not. ALL Planned Parenthood locations are targets.). It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a nurse, receptionist, bookkeeper, or janitor, if you work for the murderous abortionist I’m going to kill you.”

According to research by the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project, Spitz and other Army of God figures such as Neal Horsley and David Leach corresponded with Waagner while he was in prison, in what may have been a recruitment campaign. Horsley is best known for posting on his Nuremberg Files Web site photos of doctors, accompanied by personal information that might assist a would-be killer in locating the doctors or their families. Critics called it a “hit list,” in part because the names of murdered doctors were subsequently crossed out.

In a letter to Leach, Waagner called for the formation of a “Combat Information Center,” a Web site that would include “data on every abortion mill in the country: address, phone number, hours of operation, names of staff and photos. The type of intelligence that would be useful to a field warrior,” he wrote. While some people feel that the Nuremberg Files site already serves that purpose, Waagner thinks more comprehensive information is needed.

Waagner’s relationships to Army of God figures alarm Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, but they don’t surprise her. She has watched with horror as the rhetoric from this sector has mushroomed from protest to justification for violence and murder to justification for violence against “accessories” to language that suggests that anyone in a “war zone” is fair game. “There is clearly a network that is encouraging, and aiding and abetting Waagner and others,” Smeal says.

Waagner’s threat to kill clinic staff is also worrisome because it recalls the attack of the young, deranged John Salvi, who shot up two clinics in Brookline, Mass., in 1995, killing two receptionists and wounding three others. Waagner’s connections to Spitz have clinic security officials concerned as well.

Salvi eluded capture for several days after the Brookline massacre, driving down the East Coast to Norfolk, Va., where he was apprehended by police shortly after spraying the outside of a clinic with bullets from a semiautomatic weapon. Spitz, who lives nearby, said he did not know Salvi and didn’t know how he got his number. But he did demonstrate in support of Salvi outside the local jail.

“I think it was divine intervention [that Salvi came here],” Spitz said. “Maybe because there is support for him here.” Salvi was found guilty of the two murders, but his conviction was later vacated when he committed suicide in Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts before he could complete an appeal.

Waagner’s criminal record dates back to the theft of a motorcycle in Lynchburg, Va., in the mid-1970s, according to Dennis Roddy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who has followed the case closely. Waagner served 52 months in federal prison in the early 1990s on charges stemming from the theft of a $83,000 coin collection, as well as on firearms charges. The FBI lists five aliases he has used in his criminal career.

The catalyst that turned Waagner’s growing antiabortion militancy into a terrorist crusade seems to have been the funeral service his minister held following his daughter’s miscarriage in January 1999. “It did something to me that is just hard to express,” Waagner said, and God then called him to “be [his] warrior” and to kill abortion doctors. In September 1999, according to TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” — which has profiled Waagner four times — he escaped into Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest after police stopped him in yet another stolen vehicle.

“Inside the vehicle,” intoned host John Walsh, “there were stolen license plates, fraudulent licenses, three gas cans, two stun guns, laptop computer, photo equipment, scanner, a Solider of Fortune magazine [and] a handwritten list of abortion clinics in Tennessee and Georgia.”

Waagner tried to plead insanity at his trial, claiming that he was receiving messages from God. But in his Army of God communiqués, he no longer embraces insanity, but affects more of the smirking esprit de corps that marks the public posture of the Army of God. And while he may be less glamorous than Hollywood’s version of the legendary on-the-lam gangster, Waagner is now combining Internet-age savvy with his known skills as a bank robber, car thief and survivalist.

Waagner’s posting to the Army of God site is consistent with the group’s recent efforts to use the Internet as a tool of intimidation and psychological warfare, and to augment the physical violence perpetrated against providers. The intersection of the two strategies is epitomized by the recent posting of the photos of patients, escorts and staff coming and going at abortion clinics on the Nuremberg Files Web site. The stated purpose is to intimidate women from seeking abortion. Hundreds of photos have been posted so far, and more are added almost daily. (This week, some portions of the site were blocked by its server, Webfever.net, which posted this message: “We are neither for nor against the content provided by this website, however due to the graphic nature of this website, we have decided the content falls in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy on our servers.”)

ArmyofGod.com, whose short list of links includes the Nuremberg Files, hosts the “authorized home pages” of Army of God “martyrs” Paul Hill, convicted in the double murder of an abortion provider and his escort, and Rachelle “Shelly” Shannon, convicted of the attempted murder of Dr. George Tiller and of firebombing clinics all over the West. The site also posts a notorious handbook of terror tactics that have been used against abortion providers, which was originally unearthed from Shannon’s backyard by federal agents.

Two days after Waagner’s communiqué Spitz posted a note “for Clayton” expressing the wish that “God continue to keep you safe!” — purportedly from Shannon, who remains in federal custody.

During its existence, the Waagner message board also became a place for “me too” threats. Someone using the handle “Sparky” wrote on June 21, “ABORTION MILLS IN THE HAMPTON ROADS VIRGINIA AREA. I HOPE YOU TAKE CLAYTONS THREATS SERIOUSELY.”

Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agencies are aggressively using the Internet in support of their efforts to track Waagner. Besides the U.S. Marshals Service, Waagner is also being pursued by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, each of which has a “wanted” poster on its Web site.

Citizen groups like the Feminist Majority Foundation are also playing a pivotal role in using the Internet to track terrorists. The FMF, which provides security and political support for clinics, issued an “urgent security alert” on the Waagner threats with links to the Web pages of law enforcement agencies.

Even as the hunt for Waagner heats up, the fugitive is plunging deeper into the otherworldliness of the zealot. The cops don’t seem to understand his escape from prison, he says. “But I do. My God has called me to a task,” he asserts. “He freed me and He protected me … I am anointed and called to be God’s Warrior. And in that call I am protected by THE MOST HIGH GOD.”

It’s tough for his many critics to see Horsley as a journalist. He’s been a leading frontman for the violent underground group Army of God, and his Christian Gallery News Service is probably the first and only news agency organized for the sole purpose of intimidating women from exercising their constitutional right to an abortion.

“Ask yourself this,” Horsley writes: “If you were pregnant, would you be more or less likely to go kill your baby if you knew there was a possibility your picture would be published in a place where your friends and family and the whole world might see it. Only a liar would deny it: you would be less likely.”

The Nuremberg Files may be best known for its part in a landmark federal lawsuit in Portland, Ore., Planned Parenthood vs. American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA). The suit, brought by Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women’s Health Center and several doctors, contends that publishing the names, addresses and photos and other personal information of abortion providers — in the form of Old West-style wanted posters as well as the postings on Horsley’s site — constituted a threat to abortion providers.

A federal jury found for the plaintiffs, and ordered the ACLA and its leaders to pay $109 million in damages. The verdict led several Internet providers, including Mindspring and Hypermart, to ban Horsley’s site. Then in March, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the jury verdict and the injunction against continued publishing of the controversial materials. “Political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party,” the panel ruled.

The plaintiffs are seeking a hearing by the full court, which is expected to decide this summer whether to hear the case. Whatever the outcome, both sides expect it will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Horsley’s efforts to wrap his webcam plan in the mantle of the First Amendment will probably only serve to further intensify the debate. “We intend to stream a steady collection of pictures showing the people who go out to where they slaughter babies for a living,” Horsley announced in a recent letter to supporters. “Live Web Cams (Abortioncams.com) Are Now Rolling!”

In fact, no videos are yet rolling; so far the site includes only still photos of doctors and staff, as well as patients and clinic defenders, usually in front of clinics. But the photos and later the streaming images are being published on the same site where dozens of names of doctors, clinic workers and law enforcement officers are crossed out or printed in gray, depending on whether they were killed or wounded by antiabortion violence.

The tactic may represent a shift in focus for the militant wing of the movement as well. According to Horsley, the antiabortion movement has mistakenly viewed women as “victims” of an evil abortion industry. In a recent fundraising letter, he compares women seeking abortions to “serial murderers.” He says that women know the difference between right and wrong and should therefore be “punished.”

“Why,” he asks, “should infanticides be treated differently?”

Horsley’s site is named for the city where the German war crimes trials were held after World War II. As Horsley explains, “A coalition of concerned citizens throughout the USA is cooperating in collecting dossiers on abortionists in anticipation that one day we may be able to hold them on trial for crimes against humanity.”

Many in the abortion-rights movement, of course, believe Horsley and his allies are the real criminals. Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, who is listed on the Nuremberg site, notes there have been seven murders and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers in the past decade. She believes that the site and the “wanted” posters “provide the information necessary for extremists to target abortion providers for violence.”

The criticism of Horsley’s site as a hit list escalated after he began crossing out the names of murdered doctors and clinic staff — most infamously Dr. Barnett Slepian — shortly after their demise. (The accused assassin of Slepian, James Kopp, is awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings in a jail cell in France.) Among others, Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols — clinic receptionists murdered by John Salvi in Brookline, Mass., in 1994 — are listed and crossed out. Horsley has lately taken to additionally posting the struck-through names of women who have allegedly died from botched legal abortions, to blunt the charge that he’s tallying only the deaths of abortion providers.

Meanwhile, Horsley has posted a teaser version of his new “news” coverage. For now, it’s just a still-photo montage of his view of the abortion wars: shots of doctors and clinic workers, gory fetus pictures and photos of antiabortion activists from Catholic Bishop Daly of Brooklyn, N.Y., to fugitive white supremacist Eric Rudolph, who remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, following his indictment for the pipe bombing of the Atlanta Olympics and the bombing of a gay bar in Atlanta and of clinics in Sandy Spring, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala.

Most of the photos, like the videos he promises to webcast, were taken by antiabortion clinic protesters — or “sidewalk counselors,” as they often call themselves. One photo features Patricia Baird-Windle, shown in a 1994 photo arriving at the Melbourne, Fla., clinic she owned for 22 years. She is the coauthor of the just-published “Targets of Hatred: Antiabortion Terrorism,” which tells the story of the abortion wars from the viewpoint of beleaguered abortion providers. “I think this is the wave of the antiabortion future,” Baird-Windle, also a Nuremberg Files listee, told Salon. “And it wouldn’t be tolerated if it were any other medical or social institution. The abortion exception,” she believes, “has allowed the antis to engage in a form of mob rule.”

Broadcasting via clinic cams has been one of Horsley’s goals for a long time. While some clinic security experts suggest that he may not have the money and level of organization to do it yet, many abortion-rights advocates see even his preliminary version as an escalation. Some are so accustomed to the climate of harassment, violence and threats of violence that the prospect of clinic cams neither shocks nor surprises. Others are alarmed to find their pictures posted on the Internet as the implied threat becomes more personal.

Defenders of the site maintain that it is not intended to be a hit list, but Horsley is clearly very conscious of the intimidating effects of strategic assassinations. Pointing to Slepian’s crossed-out name on his computer screen in one sequence in the recent HBO documentary “Soldiers in the Army of God,” Horsley recalled his reaction to the murder of Dr. Slepian: “When I drew a line through his name, I said ‘See, I told ya. There’s another one. How many more is it gonna take?’”

“The evidence is at hand,” Horsley declares. “There are people out there who [will] go out and blow their brains out.”

Originally, the Nuremberg Files listed only abortion providers, but over time, the list has grown to comprise several hundred others whom militant antiabortion activists view as “abortionists” because of their political support for reproductive rights, or their efforts to enforce the law.

“Judges and politicians who pass or uphold laws authorizing child-killing or oppressing pro-life activists: These classes of individuals,” among others, he declares, “are all committing various crimes to which they should answer. We regard them all as ‘abortionists.’” Horsley is still adding names.

In addition to pro-abortion-rights actresses including Mary Tyler Moore, Cybill Shepherd, Jane Fonda and Whoopi Goldberg — who are “blood flunkies,” in Horsley’s lexicon — there is a long list of political leaders, current and former federal judges, law enforcement officers and government officials of both parties. The list is headed by former President Clinton and includes former Vice President Gore and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy; Republicans Bob Dole and Susan Collins; newly independent Sen. James Jeffords; former Surgeons General C. Everett Koop and Joycelyn Elders; and pro-choice leaders Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, and Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women.

Horsley also lists three dozen federal judges under the heading “Judges: their shysters.” Among these are Robert Jones, who presided over Planned Parenthood vs. ACLA, and six members of the U.S. Supreme Court: Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who will ultimately hear the final appeal in this case.

Horsley’s list is frequently updated, and is now queued up to post the names of 43 members of Congress, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who last month had the temerity to join the plaintiffs in requesting the full 9th Circuit Court to consider the case. Schumer, author of the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), said the decision of the three-judge panel undermines the legislative intent of the law, which made it a federal crime to use violence and threats to obstruct access to reproductive health clinics and to intimidate doctors who provide such services.

The original version of the Nuremberg Files listed some 225 doctors and abortion providers, along with their addresses, their photos, their license plate numbers and the names of their children and what schools they attend. The current (but ever-changing) version of the site is mostly more cautious. Horsley has collected and published detailed information about providers in Maryland, interestingly, but to date, listees elsewhere in the country don’t include that personal information. But many names are hyperlinked to the pro-life section of About.com, a topical commercial Web site, which then directs visitors to information about specific providers.

The section’s editor, Christina Dunigan, worked as a researcher for the militantly antiabortion group Life Dynamics of Denton, Texas. Life Dynamics has collected intelligence about abortion providers to inform readers about what founder Mark Crutcher has called “opportunities before us which, if properly exploited, could result in an America where abortion may indeed be perfectly legal, but no one can get one.”

Dunigan insists that the links between her site and the Nuremberg Files “do not constitute an endorsement of any views expressed on the Nuremberg Files,” but because the controversial site, she writes, “is viewed by some citizens as an effort to incite violence, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that there is no endorsement of violence anywhere on that site.”

Of course, abortion-rights advocates disagree strongly, but the three-judge panel that reversed the ruling against the ACLA sided with Dunigan and the Nuremberg Files. In its opinion, written by Judge Alex Kozinski, the panel noted that intimidating speech had played a crucial role in American history, from the War of Independence through the abolition, labor and civil rights movements. The judges noted that the wanted posters and the Nuremberg Files make no direct threat of violence, and that the perceived threat derives from the context of violence against abortion providers, including some who were murdered after the wanted posters were published.

“If political discourse is to rally public opinion and challenge conventional thinking,” the panel declared, “it cannot be subdued. Nor may we saddle political speakers with implications their words do not literally convey but are later ‘discovered’ by judges and juries with the benefit of hindsight and by reference to facts over which the speaker has no control.”

Even some abortion-rights advocates agree with Kozinski. The ACLU filed a brief supporting portions of both sides of the lawsuit. Still, it’s easy to see why advocates believe Horsley’s words convey a direct threat of violence, especially given his ties to the Army of God, the shadowy network of antiabortion terrorists in whose name clinic bombings and assassinations have been carried out since the early 1980s. Horsley was not only featured in “Soldiers in the Army of God,” but he is a forceful advocate for the AOG on his warren of related Web sites.

For example, in an essay titled “Understanding the Army of God,” Horsley describes the enemy as a culture and a country that have fallen away from God’s laws. As such, he considers the U.S. government illegitimate, and calls for a revolutionary secessionist movement under the Calvinist doctrine of the “lesser magistrate.”

“If the American people woke up,” Horsley argues in the HBO documentary, “and realized that they had to choose between legalized abortion, legalized homosexuality and legalized all the rest of the desecration — or civil war which would cause the rivers to run red with blood — hey, you know we will see legalized abortion go like that! We’ll see legalized homosexuality go like that! Because the American people,” he concludes, “are not willing to die for homosexuals.”

Horsley sees the AOG as holy warriors, and embraces their “terrorist actions” because “the government of the USA has become a godless and apostate body.” Therefore, he declares, “the people who rise up in arms against such idolatry deserve the name ‘The Army of God.’” In this regard, he seeks to “realize our power to use the Internet against Satan’s plans” to “destroy God’s plan for government.”

And the above-ground group of spokespersons for the Army of God seems to have morphed out of the now defunct ACLA, the defendants in the Portland case. After serving four years in prison for clinic bombings in the 1980s, the Rev. Michael Bray, author of the antiabortion manifesto “A Time to Kill,” emerged as an ACLA leader in the 1990s, and was involved in the launch of ACLA’s “Deadly Dozen” wanted posters campaign in 1995 and the Nuremberg Files project in 1996. In “A Time to Kill,” Bray advocates “the principle of revolution and the goal of establishing or preserving a Christian government,” and declares that “Revolution may well be justified in our time of legalized sodomy, national apostasy (in the name of separation of church and state) and taxation to support child slaughter.” Horsley currently hosts Bray’s Web site.

Bray and his accomplices also bombed the Washington offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation in 1984. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, headed the Washington office of the ACLU at the time of the bombing, and recalls how bomb fragments ripped a poster promoting the Bill of Rights that hung in his office. “These threats need to be taken seriously by anyone whose ideas run counter to these extremist groups.”

Federal law enforcement agencies have already investigated many AOG members in the course of criminal investigations of clinic violence. And some are also responding to the broader threat. Last year, Secret Service agents visited Horsley pal Bob Lokey, a 60-year-old Army of God member from Opp, Ala., out of concern for the safety of the president and the Supreme Court. In “Soldiers in the Army of God,” Lokey played a tape recording of the visit in which he says he had no intention of hurting anyone, but that when the civil war comes, well, he really can’t say what will happen. On his Web site, he discusses how to utilize “homemade weaponry such as pipe bombs,” which could be “thrown into an abortion factory,” or “delivered in a briefcase and deposited wherever appropriate.”

The first photo on Horsley’s test Web video site is of Lokey’s painting of a fetus hanging on a hook dangling from the arm of Uncle Sam.

While some of this is braggadocio and psychological warfare, it may be impossible to tell where intimidation leaves off and violence begins. During the Portland trial, defendant and ACLA leader Andrew Burnett testified: “If I was an abortionist … I would be afraid … I believe abortion kills a human being. I also believe, as most Americans do, there’s such a thing as a justifiable homicide.”

But for now, Horsley is trying to depict himself as someone whose activities are protected by constitutional free-speech protections, and the latest court decision on the matter took his side. “All, really, anybody has accused us of doing,” Horsley has said, “is printing factually verifiable information. If the First Amendment does not allow a publisher to publish factually verifiable information, then I don’t understand what the First Amendment is about.”

The march’s pihce de risistance will be a spectacular ceremony in which Farrakhan will renew the vows of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of married couples — modeled after the mass marriage ceremonies led by Moon for the past 30 years.

“This reflects the ways Rev. Moon has influenced Minister Farrakhan,” explained Rev. Phil Schanker, an official of Moon’s Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU).

Schanker says that Moon’s role in the Million Family March is the fruit of a three-year personal relationship that began when Farrakhan helped officiate at one of Moon’s marriage ceremonies at Washington’s RFK Stadium in 1997. Though Moon may not address the march himself for what Schanker describes as “security reasons,” internal FFWPU memos posted on a church Web site state that Moon, who turned 80 in February, decided to back the event after learning from his aides “of Minister Farrakhan’s personal desire to ask him to bless all the families at the MFM.”

The alliance took some scholars and experts of the religious groups by surprise. Martha Lee, the Canadian author of “The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement” found it “curious … that the two of them are trying to become respectable by allying with each other.” But Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates in Somerville, Mass., was quick to point out similarities between the leaders: “They are both completely authoritarian, theocratic, male-dominated and homophobic.”

As Moon and Farrakhan edge toward the ends of their respective scandal-prone careers, they are increasingly mindful of their legacies. Both have sought to move beyond their controversial reputations to achieve mainstream legitimacy.

Each group has a checkered history that it would rather people forget. While the Million Man March proved to be dramatic and inspiring for many African-American men, it was also notable for its controversy and divisiveness. Many objected to the exclusion of women. The headline-grabbing anti-Jewish and anti-white demagoguery that has marked the history of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and its leaders, including Farrakhan, drove others away. NOI security team, the Fruit of Islam, has had a thuggish history that Farrakhan has sought to put behind the organization.

Farrakhan, 67, who has suffered from prostate cancer, emerged from his illness earlier this year with new messages of reconciliation. While Farrakhan watchers are divided about the sincerity of his change of heart, the new messages of inclusiveness are evident in Farrakhan’s approach to the march. He has invited people of all ethnicities, races and religions — even Jews — to march “under their own banners” at the Million Family March.

But only weeks before the march, a sex scandal centered around march coordinator Minister Benjamin F. Muhammad, threatened to overshadow the event. In an investigative story titled “The Shame of Mosque No. 7,” the Village Voice questioned whether march coordinator Muhammad “is fit to lead” in light of a $140 million civil suit recently filed against him. The suit alleges that Muhammad sexually harassed and assaulted an NOI volunteer secretary when he served as Farrakhan’s lone representative in New York. “Until recently,” wrote reporter Peter Noel, “the sordid details of his three-year stint at the 127th Street mosque remained hidden behind Farrakhan’s new family values crusade.” Muhammad denies the allegations.

The charges are noteworthy in part because Muhammad, previously known as Rev. Ben Chavis, was fired as head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1994 amid revelations that he had diverted at least $250,000 of the organization’s funds to quietly settle charges of sex-discrimination against him. Farrakhan subsequently hired Chavis to direct the Million Man March. Chavis changed his name to Muhammad when he converted from Christianity to Islam. In 1997, Farrakhan appointed him head of the New York mosque once led by Malcolm X.

So far there has been little national news about the march except the entertainment-industry hype about the backing of black entertainment moguls and the booking of top popular and hip-hop acts who will perform at the rally. Entertainers already signed on to perform include Macy Gray, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Run-DMC and Kelly Price. PSAs to promote the march by Dead Prez and Snoop Dogg are running on radio stations around the country. The Congressional Black Caucus, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Bar Association, among others, have also endorsed the march.

Farrakhan’s efforts at entering the mainstream not withstanding, he sounded like a leader of the Christian right at a Sept. 11 press conference in Chicago to promote the Million Family March. He blamed a “moral and spiritual decline” on society’s supposed “extreme position in the separation of church and state,” and compared America to “ancient Rome, which fell due to corruption from within.”

But it’s the appearance of Moon’s organization that looms largest over the event. Moon, the self-proclaimed Messiah, is a multinational businessman, media mogul and a convicted felon. His career of controversy and deep political involvement has usually involved the international far-right. The Moon empire publishes and subsidizes the conservative and famously unprofitable Washington Times, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in its business of producing a pro-Messiah alternative to the Washington Post. (Moon’s media company also purchased the venerable but financially vulnerable United Press International wire service earlier this year; prompting the immediate resignation of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas.)

The Moon organization and its numerous subsidiaries came to prominence over the years for, among other activities, funneling aid to the Nicaraguan contras after the U.S. Congress cut off funding in 1984 and staging mediagenic rallies in state capitols and at the Statue of Liberty to whip up popular support for the war against Iraq.

Moon has advocated “an automatic theocracy to rule the world” and often denounced American constitutional democracy, individualism and feminism. “You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan” he insisted in a 1995 sermon.

Snapshots of the evolution of the Farrakhan/Moon relationship can be found in the online official newspapers of the two religious organizations they represent, the Final Call and the Unification News. According to one pre-march report in the Final Call, Farrakhan thanked Moon as he rallied MFM supporters in a plush ballroom of the Manhattan Center — a Moon-controlled entertainment venue in New York. Similarly, Unification News frequently notes the presence of NOI leaders and delegations at a wide range of Moon-sponsored events. NOI leaders and activists are also frequently mentioned in accounts of the activities of the Moon-sponsored Pure Love Alliance, which promotes sexual abstinence and abstinence education.

In 1998, a Final Call writer published a story in Unification News detailing a pivotal moment in the pas de deux. Under the headline “Friendship in Korea: Min. Farrakhan meets with Rev. Moon” — an article recounting how a Farrakhan-led delegation had visited Moon’s religious, business and industrial facilities in South Korea on the last leg of a “World Friendship Tour.” Farrakhan praised Moon to the heavens, and suggested “that some union with the Nation of Islam and Rev. Sun Myung Moon” might be productive.

In addition to the mass nuptials, Moon plans to host a high-profile, three-day conference of international leaders that will overlap with the march. “This is truly a moment that comes only once in history,” one FFWPU memo declared. The conclave will “bring together all the heads of Religions and Denominations and top political leaders, (i.e. presidents, kings, ambassadors and U.S. leaders) that True Parents have educated over the last 30 years. They will be asked to sit in a prestigious World VIP area of the MFM at the base of our nation’s capitol building displaying absolute unity for world peace.”

Although he declined to name any confirmed participants, Schanker said that “hundreds of former presidents, prime ministers and university presidents” will participate.

Improbable and grandiose as such rhetoric may seem, Moon has often managed to attract A-list celebrities and politicians to his events.

At one 1996 conference in Washington, Moon garnered such conservative stars as former presidents George Bush and Gerald Ford, TV preacher Robert Schuller and Christian right leaders Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer. Comedian Bill Cosby provided entertainment, but later angrily said that he had been duped, and would not have agreed to appear had he known it was a Moon-sponsored event. Moon’s 80th birthday celebration in February was no less star-studded. Former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, former President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda and former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle all turned out for the Washington event.

Moon’s invitations are attractive in part because they often come with cash. The former President Bush (sometimes accompanied by former first lady Barbara Bush) spoke at a series of Moon-sponsored events in Japan, Argentina and the U.S. after he left the White House. Estimates of how much the couple received for these appearances run between $1 million and $10 million. Former Reagan Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp earned $52,000 from Moon-affiliated groups in the year before becoming Bob Dole’s GOP running mate in 1996.

In 1998, investigative reporter Robert Parry revealed how a Moon subsidiary organization funneled $3.5 million into a nonprofit organization in Virginia, in a scheme intended to ease a major financial crisis at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Falwell has been ubiquitous at Moon-sponsored events since at least the early 1980s when he led a chorus of complaints that Moon was “persecuted” rather than prosecuted on criminal charges of conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his federal tax fraud case. (Moon was convicted and spent 13 months in federal prison.)

Since his release, Moon’s people have sought to burnish the church’s image. FFWPU’s Schanker says that the Unification Church has now “matured” and does not engage in deceptive practices. If any occurred, he asserted, they were in the 1970s and were not authorized.

“They are trying to mainstream, and don’t want to be viewed as controversial,” says Steven Hassan, a former Moonist leader, anti-cult activist and author of “Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves.” Hassan says, however, that a scandal has been rocking the church and caused some longtime members to leave and others to think about it. In her tell-all book, “In the Shadow of the Moons,” Moon’s ex-daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, alleges she was abused by Moon’s son and heir-apparent Hyo Jin Moon. Hong describes her former husband as a cocaine addict who engaged in frequent extramarital sex and drank heavily while watching pornographic videos. He also apparently financed a lavish lifestyle with cash smuggled into the U.S. from abroad.

According to the court records of Hong’s divorce from Moon, in 1994 alone church members delivered $1 million in cash to Hyo Jin who ran the church-controlled Manhattan Center in New York. Hong also describes the elder Moon as a philanderer who likes to gamble in Las Vegas casinos.

All the high-level shoulder rubbing not withstanding, some believe Moon’s involvement with the Million Family March contradicts the event’s stated goal of strengthening the traditional family.

“Bizarre,” said Pricilla Coates, president of the Leo J. Ryan Foundation in Bridgeport, Conn., when asked what she thought of Moon’s involvement. Coates blasted what she considers to be the Unification Church’s record of deceptive recruiting and indoctrination tactics that separate people from their biological or adoptive families. “Moon has had no respect for families that I’ve dealt with,” she said. “They are not allowed to see their children. The True Family means that the family that you grew up with is nothing,” she concluded. “It’s only the True Family that matters.”

The “True Parents” — Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han — are also known as “True Father” and “True Mother.” The church itself is the “True Family.” “Blessed Wives” are women who have been married in Moon’s mass weddings or “Blessings.” Unificationist “Blessed Couples” are usually strangers, interracial, international and often do not speak the same language.

Meanwhile, others note that the family values themes of the Million Family March mask the conservative gender roles advocated by both groups. Women in the Nation of Islam have traditionally played a subservient role and, says Lee, the author, Farrakhan is likely reaching out to them as a response to the criticism he received for alienating women from the 1995 Million Man March. He is also seeking to widen his appeal.

But even if Farrakhan seems to be extending an olive branch, Moon’s view of women, and hence of family life, is at odds with all but perhaps the most conservative religious traditions. “[I]f you desire to receive the seed of life,” he declared in a 1995 sermon, “you have to become an absolute object. In order to qualify as an absolute object, you need to demonstrate absolute faith, love and obedience to your subject. Absolute obedience means that you have to negate yourself 100 percent.”

A call for such obedience (Schanker calls it “vertical leadership”) was on display when Moon decided to go all out in support of the march. Hundreds of “Blessed Wives” were in airports en route to a seminar in South Korea when they were suddenly re-called to work on the march. Rev. Chang Shik Yang, and Rev. Michael Jenkins of the FFWPU sought to assuage the women’s “confusion” about the “new direction” — which they described as “almost unbearable” — so much so that “they cried out to heaven in anguish.” “Please rest assured,” the men concluded, “that this direction is official. This is the will of heaven as directed by our ‘True Parents.’”

The women were also directed to donate their $1,000 seminar fees to the Family Federation. All other families were to put up $300, and were told they should expect to cough up more for the church’s regional offices.

But those women might be disappointed by the Million Family March’s ambitious agenda of public policy goals. Organizers write that the march “offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform the social, political, economic and spiritual landscape of America;” and that the agenda “was drafted broad enough to be inclusive of the mutual political interests of Black, Hispanic, Native, Asian and Pacific Islander, Arab and White Americans;” and that they hope that a new political coalition will emerge, to push for “progressive public policy” at all levels of government.

Examination of the Unification Church’s role in the detailed “National Agenda” posted on the Million Family March Web site exposes further anomalies. The agenda is a paradoxical hybrid of progressive domestic and foreign policy interests and conservative positions on sexuality issues that mirror those of the religious right. For example, the National Agenda advocates such progressive notions as affirmative action, Native American sovereignty, affordable housing and universal healthcare for children. But the section titled the “Divine Institution of Marriage” invokes conservative interpretations of the Koran and the Bible. Gay and lesbian civil unions and civil rights, reproductive healthcare and abortion are ignored throughout the document, even in connection with discussion of HIV and AIDS. But there is little mention of women at all outside of the section on family, which seems to primarily reflect the views and input of the Nation of Island and the Unification Church — the only sources cited in the chapter notes.

What’s more, there is significant internal dissent over Farrakhan’s views and the march agenda. One Moon political operative, Dan Fefferman, wrote to his colleagues that Moon knows that many of them have “problems with Farrakhan,” for example, over the NOI’s call for “a ban on interracial marriage and their support for a separate nation for American blacks,” and NOI’s denial of the existence of the Sudanese slave trade. Fefferman also writes, “There are certainly policies in the march’s agenda … which most of us do not support.”

Fefferman wrote that church leaders have stated “our support for the march is limited to central themes such as the God-centered family, interracial harmony, interreligous unity and moral revival.” Fefferman’s concerns are probably radically understated since the Moon organization has played an active and prominent role on the far right of American politics since the Kennedy administration.

Schanker was unable to explain his claim that the march is not political even though it is bringing a stated public policy agenda to Washington two weeks before a national election. He insisted that the three march themes are “atonement, reconciliation and responsibility,” even after it was pointed out to him that the MFM Web site says that the themes are “family, morality and public policy.”

Finally, even Farrakhan had difficulty explaining the role of the Moon organization to his black nationalist colleagues on the National Organizing Committee on Sept. 21: “I don’t want us to get bent out of shape because folk of another race desire to help,” he declared. “I say to the Muslims that are present that I am grateful for the help of the Family Federation for World Peace under Rev. and Mrs. Moon … The Honorable Elijah Muhammad [Farrakhan's predecessor as head of NOI] told us that people would come from the East, that they would teach us everything we need to know in order to be the people that God meant for us to be.”

While the Moon organization certainly shares some of Farrakhan’s views, Clarence Lusane, an assistant professor at American University in Washington and author of several books on African-American politics, thinks they have been particularly useful in furthering the appearance of Farrakhan’s new inclusiveness. He says that while presence of Asian and white Americans from the tiny Unification Church at pre-march rallies has helped, there is actually less racial and religious diversity than meets the eye.

Lusane sees Farrakhan’s collaboration with Moon as a “one-to-one convergence of interests” in which both gain an image of broader support and influence than actually exists. The alliance benefits Moon in this regard because, says Lusane, a close relationship with NOI “allows Moon to pretend that he has a base that is broader than it is in the African-American community.”

While Farrakhan and Moon may be indulging in a kind of apocalyptic grandiosity that only aging prophets and messiahs are capable of, both also have a record of staging large-scale events, and maintaining disciplined, arguably totalitarian organizations to carry them out. But can they attract the kind and number of people that will make this an historic event on the scale that they envision?

Eleven years after Robertson’s surprisingly strong second place finish in the 1988 Iowa Caucus led to the creation of the Christian Coalition, Christian activist Gary Bauer represents perhaps the most serious challenge to his political and evangelical preeminence. Like Robertson before him, Bauer is parlaying his popularity among Christian activists into a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He has long been the head of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby group closely linked with radio psychologist James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family.” Dobson’s family values rhetoric and Bauer’s inside-the-Beltway savvy have always contrasted with Robertson’s strident Christian nationalism.

Bauer is a regular on Dobson’s syndicated radio program, which reaches millions of listeners every day. Their national network of public policy groups rivals the Christian Coalition for influence in several states. Russ Bellant, author of “The Religious Right in Michigan Politics,” called the Michigan Family Forum “the major religious right organization” in the state.

Though the two share similar political goals, the rivalry between Bauer and Robertson surfaced earlier this month at a Coalition powwow for prospective presidential nominees in Manchester, N.H. As a warm-up act for candidate speeches, Robertson was addressing a crowd of more than 1,000 party activists and reporters, recalling the history of his political organization’s name. “People wanted to make some sort of milquetoasty name, you know, like ‘Greater Family Foundation,’” he recalled. “But I said, ‘No, I’m not ashamed to be a Christian! We’re going to call this organization the Christian Coalition.’” The reminiscence was a thinly veiled swipe at the Family Research Council and Bauer, whose candidacy threatens Robertson’s preeminence in the Christian right.

This infighting between Bauer and Robertson stems partially from the turf and ego battles that mark most political tiffs. But there have also been differences over the impeachment issue. Robertson surprised and outraged many conservatives when, weeks before the close of the Senate impeachment trial, he declared that Clinton had won, the trial should end and conservatives should cut their losses. (He later said his comments reflected “political analysis,” not his own views.) This pragmatic approach did not sit well with many of the true believers who accused Robertson of capitulating. Indeed, all of the candidates at the Christian Coalition’s New Hampshire forum roused the crowd with calls for Clinton’s ouster.

Playing off House manager Henry Hyde’s declaration that impeachment wasn’t over “until the fat lady sings,” radio talk show host Alan Keyes went to work. “I mean no insult to the Christian Coalition, [but] it’s time that we remember before we are even tempted to throw in the towel, that we are the fat lady, and we better start singing!”

Despite the thunderous applause, Keyes was playing to a crowd that is clearly not as powerful as it was earlier in the decade. Christian Coalition meetings used to command the appearance of George Bush, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich in the glory days of the early 1990s, and Republican political hopefuls of all stripes came to pay their respects to the coalition rank and file. At this latest forum, however, the only presidential candidates to make the trek were Bauer, Keyes and publisher Steve Forbes. Former Vice President Dan Quayle sent a video greeting, while a handful of other well-known presumptive candidates took a pass altogether.

The decline in the coalition’s power stems from a series of financial and legal problems that ultimately led to the 1997 leadership change within the organization. Reed and Robertson were replaced by former Rep. Randy Tate and Don Hodel, who served as energy secretary under Ronald Reagan. The organization was faced with sagging revenues, declining membership, a pending IRS investigation and a lawsuit by the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal campaign contributions to Republican politicians.

But like the rest of the Republican Party, impeachment remains the most sensitive open wound for the right wing, and Robertson’s comments seem to have only worsened the Christian Coalition’s problems. As part of the impeachment fallout, there is an increasing malaise evident among top lieutenants in the right wing’s culture war, the people who helped bring the Christian movement to political prominence over the last decade. Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, a once-powerful right-wing lobbying group, recently posted a dejected “Dear Friend” letter on the group’s Web site. Weyrich, who coined the phrase “moral majority” and helped elevate Rev. Jerry Falwell to national prominence, suggested that “there is no moral majority” among the American people. He blamed American culture, which he dubbed “an ever-wider sewer” and bemoaned America as “a state totally dominated by an alien ideology, an ideology bitterly hostile to Western culture.” Given this “cultural collapse of historic proportions,” Weyrich suggested the presidential prospects for conservatives are dim. Instead, Weyrich called for a self-imposed Christian cultural “quarantine,” to keep from becoming “infected” by a degenerate American society.

The challenge for power brokers within the Christian right will be to stop the exodus of conservatives like Weyrich from the political front lines, while maintaining their clout within the Republican Party at large. Whether these are simply growing pains of a movement in transition or the beginning of a departure of Christian conservatives from the political process — heralding a much more fundamental political shift within the GOP — remains to be seen. If nothing else, the current rift threatens the effective strategy employed by the Christian right throughout the 1990s — to work as a small, untied voting bloc to help conservatives in Republican primaries. The current tensions and disarray among them suggests a lively presidential primary season in which the struggle for leadership of the conservative movement, as well as the Republican Party, will be at stake.